So I wanted to see if you all had any experience with using SurveyGizmo at conferences. How did you use it? What types of surveys did you run? How did it go?

We’d love to hear from you and we’ll feature our favorite stories here, on the blog. Just send over your stories to Marni at marni@sgizmo.com and let her know how you’re using SurveyGizmo at conferences.

As an added bonus – if you send us a story about how you use SurveyGizmo at a conference, we’ll send over one of our great limited-edition metal water bottles.

Speaking of the swing of things, we know everyone has different uses for SurveyGizmo, and we’d love to hear all your stories, especially those focused on using surveys when it comes to the Back to School season.

Just shoot Marni, our product marketing manager, an email at marni@sgizmo.com, with how you’re using SurveyGizmo for the Back to School season and the best story will be:

• Featured right here, on our blog
• Receive a SurveyGizmo schwag bag including: Laptop bag, t-shirts, and water bottles

And as always, if you have any other feedback – good, bad, or ugly, Marni is your customer advocate, so feel free to give her you feedback!

Speaking of which – if you’re in the Chicago, Portland, or Virgina areas and are interested in attending one of the meet ups (Portland is this Friday!), you can find out more information about all the meet ups and RSVP here.

Ok – back to using SurveyGizmo as an online RSVP. I like to use it for two purposes, and the first is to send out “feelers” for a meet up, similar to a pre-RSVP.

I upload a list of contacts to the email invitation system and send out a simple 2 – 3 question survey asking people if they have suggestions on time and place, and if they think they’ll be able to make it. You could do the same for a business meet up or even a party you’re thinking of having with friends.

I then run a summary report of the data I collect from my initial questionnaire, and use that to decide on where to have the meet up, what time to have, and estimate how many people will come to make initial reservations at the restaurant or space where we’re holding it.

Once I have all that set, I send out the real RSVP with the time, date, location, etc. I take that same list of contacts that I used in the first invite and upload it to my new survey and send out the RSVP.

One awesome feature of SurveyGizmo 3.0 is that the link inside of your email invite automatically creates a new response each time they’re clicked on. I love this feature, because you can then add a “PS” to the end of your email telling users they can forward the RSVP to anyone they want to, thus expanding the reach of your invite. (Random email marketing fact – Did you know that the “PS” is one of the most read parts of an email?)

After sending the initial invite, since you’re using our email invite system, you can send reminder emails to those people who haven’t RSVP’d yet (meaning they haven’t taken your survey).

The reason I like using SurveyGizmo for my online RSVP’s is because it’s so simple to do and you really only need a Personal level account to send out the email invites (the reminders come in at the Pro level) and you’re ready to go.

If you have any fun uses for SurveyGizmo, I’d love to hear them! Heck – I’d even write a case study on the blog about how you use it! Shoot me an email at brittany@sgizmo.com if you have any fun ideas.

Yes, we do realize that we could single-handedly take out a good portion of SurveyGizmo if we were to get into an accident (knock on wood), but we have had a great experience so far– not to mention the financial and environmental benefits.

Encouraged by a commuter program to reduce congestion on US-36 between Denver and Boulder, for the first 3 months we (Brittany, Chad, and Mario) accomplished the following:

• Used the carpool over 81% of the time
• 3,396 vehicle miles reduced
• 3,111 CO₂ emissions reduced
• 70,976 VOC reduced
• 4,720 NOX reduced
• $798.06 in fuel and maintenance cost savings*

* Based on latest EPA estimates of fuel consumption and estimated $3.85/gallon

Now the carpool has grown to 4 individuals (Jase, our new Web Designer, has joined the fray), and we are continuing our efforts (and having a lot of fun doing it as well). If you have the opportunity to join a carpool with your company, we strongly encourage and support it.

The students came up with almost four dozen fun questions, and the final project is packed with neat info, such as “Do you think Snape is good or evil?” (65% say he’s evil) and “What is chef Heather’s best lunch?” (Apparently she cooks up an awesome pizza.)

The questions are accompanied by snazzy graphics; we love the SurveyGizmo charts and colorful clip art. Dr. Wallin’s class organized the data and laid out the pages — nice work, everyone!